The empty highway hummed under the tires. He longed to be piloting a mail plane in the star-shot darkness above this pine deodorant–scented car. Instead of the hum of this road home, up there he’d hear the roar of twin propellers, smell stale sweat from the cargo crew who’d loaded the plane with mail sacks full of due bills and catalogue dreams. Up there, he’d fly from a precise beginning to a predictable end. On this road, in April, 2010, he had less than an hour left to drive. They’re waiting for me. The waiting started the last day of April, thirty-five years before, as helicopters lifted defeated Americans off a roof in Vietnam and ten-year-old Jake stood alone in a graveled Shelby alley alongside a scruffy white house, waiting for Steve to hurry up and finish lunch, come outside so they could do what they had to do with Thel, get back to school and not get in . . . Steve yelling: “Don’t you hurt her!” Never can remember running inside that house. Ghosts filled Jake’s headlights.
